MAYO HUMANIST
I was born in 1955 in a small town in Mayo into a Catholic family. My father was a businessman who had come from very conservative small-farming background and had started from scratch after WW2 and built up a successful enterprise through scrimping, scraping and pure determination. My mother came from a well-to-do landed background, had more liberal views in some respects, but shared the same religious outlook and conservative values with regard to wealth and status. They both had their good points but the union was a toxic one. Although the marriage was deeply unhappy from the outset, they went on to have six more children in quick succession. One sister was later to die of drowning at the age of 20 after suffering depression for a number of years. In spite of an outward appearance of prosperity and normality, the atmosphere in the home was one of discontent, division, favouritism, bitterness, meanness and outright hatred. There was never any violence however. Due to their deeply Catholic beliefs, and concern for appearances and respectability, the idea of divorce or separation would never have entered my parents heads. The eventual outcome was the break-up of the family.
My own youthful response to the situation was confusion, poor self-esteem, lack of concentration and rebelliousness. Nonetheless, and maybe because of the latter, I had a happy childhood outside the home with lots of friends and adventures. I had no interest in sport but was an avid reader and listener to music, no doubt as a means of escape. Sent to a boarding school run by priests, I didn’t excel at anything and was generally regarded as lazy and recalcitrant. I only just managed to complete my term without getting chucked out. In spite of the deeply religious atmosphere in the school (it’s aim was to try to get us to become priests although not one of my class of 75 joined), some of the priests and lay teachers were intellectuals and were more liberal and less disciplinarian than others. A few (literature, music and language) teachers had a positive and profound influence on me. The atmosphere of rebellion of the late sixties and early seventies was right up my street and I revelled in it. By the age of sixteen I had lost all religious belief. I had one final bout of religious fervour just before the Inter Cert when in panic, having done no work, I prayed for good results but decided afterwards that that wasn’t what religion was all about.
I took a keen interest in the late sixties student riots in Paris, the Cuban Revolution, the Civil Rights movement in the US and the events in the North of Ireland and read a lot of Marxist literature, becoming a confirmed atheist in the process. After repeating the Leaving, I enrolled in UCG (as it was then) and spent a year partying around Galway before joining the family business. After 3 years, no longer able to stick the atmosphere at home and on a downward spiral of drinking, I did what many adventurers did before and went off to sea even though I knew nothing at all about it at the time. I spent 21 years on the trawlers in Killybegs visiting many ports in Ireland, Scotland, Denmark, Norway, the Faroe Islands, France and Spain. The death of my sister in 1980 had had a cathartic effect on me and I had re-examined my life and straightened myself out. I fell in love, got married (in a church - for the sake of peace) and we have 2 children. Having taken a keen interest in the events of Northern Ireland and having read everything I could lay my hands on about it, including An Phoblacht which was banned at the time, I enrolled in the Irish Open University course in DCU and got an honours degree in History, English Literature, Philosophy (got the interest in that through the Marxism) and Sociology after 5 years of study while I was at sea. I also learnt to speak Irish, got a conversational grasp of French and Spanish and basic Russian and Portugese. Positive Thinking was another acquired interest and I got Norman Vincent Peale’s book and made notes on it for myself, removing all the religious references.
After eventually returning home to take care of my parents in their old age, I inherited the family business (amid much acrimony - but that‘s another story). It was quite by chance that I came across a reference to humanism one day, Googled it, and found the HAI which I immediately joined. It has been one of the most positive experiences of my life and has given it new meaning and purpose. Whereas in the past, atheism may have engendered a certain negativity, apathy or even cynicism, humanism has been for me a force for renewal and optimism. My ‘coming out’ moment was when the HAI asked me to say a few words at the annual Famine commemoration in 2010. The Catholic Archbishop recognised me from my old school where he had been prefect of studies and actually commended me for speaking up so I rewarded him by downloading the ‘Count Me Out’ forms and formally resigning from the Catholic church. I am now known as the local humanist around here and people occasionally ask me about it and so far I have not received any negativity. I hope to become more involved in the future when, hopefully, I will have more time.
I was born in 1955 in a small town in Mayo into a Catholic family. My father was a businessman who had come from very conservative small-farming background and had started from scratch after WW2 and built up a successful enterprise through scrimping, scraping and pure determination. My mother came from a well-to-do landed background, had more liberal views in some respects, but shared the same religious outlook and conservative values with regard to wealth and status. They both had their good points but the union was a toxic one. Although the marriage was deeply unhappy from the outset, they went on to have six more children in quick succession. One sister was later to die of drowning at the age of 20 after suffering depression for a number of years. In spite of an outward appearance of prosperity and normality, the atmosphere in the home was one of discontent, division, favouritism, bitterness, meanness and outright hatred. There was never any violence however. Due to their deeply Catholic beliefs, and concern for appearances and respectability, the idea of divorce or separation would never have entered my parents heads. The eventual outcome was the break-up of the family.
My own youthful response to the situation was confusion, poor self-esteem, lack of concentration and rebelliousness. Nonetheless, and maybe because of the latter, I had a happy childhood outside the home with lots of friends and adventures. I had no interest in sport but was an avid reader and listener to music, no doubt as a means of escape. Sent to a boarding school run by priests, I didn’t excel at anything and was generally regarded as lazy and recalcitrant. I only just managed to complete my term without getting chucked out. In spite of the deeply religious atmosphere in the school (it’s aim was to try to get us to become priests although not one of my class of 75 joined), some of the priests and lay teachers were intellectuals and were more liberal and less disciplinarian than others. A few (literature, music and language) teachers had a positive and profound influence on me. The atmosphere of rebellion of the late sixties and early seventies was right up my street and I revelled in it. By the age of sixteen I had lost all religious belief. I had one final bout of religious fervour just before the Inter Cert when in panic, having done no work, I prayed for good results but decided afterwards that that wasn’t what religion was all about.
I took a keen interest in the late sixties student riots in Paris, the Cuban Revolution, the Civil Rights movement in the US and the events in the North of Ireland and read a lot of Marxist literature, becoming a confirmed atheist in the process. After repeating the Leaving, I enrolled in UCG (as it was then) and spent a year partying around Galway before joining the family business. After 3 years, no longer able to stick the atmosphere at home and on a downward spiral of drinking, I did what many adventurers did before and went off to sea even though I knew nothing at all about it at the time. I spent 21 years on the trawlers in Killybegs visiting many ports in Ireland, Scotland, Denmark, Norway, the Faroe Islands, France and Spain. The death of my sister in 1980 had had a cathartic effect on me and I had re-examined my life and straightened myself out. I fell in love, got married (in a church - for the sake of peace) and we have 2 children. Having taken a keen interest in the events of Northern Ireland and having read everything I could lay my hands on about it, including An Phoblacht which was banned at the time, I enrolled in the Irish Open University course in DCU and got an honours degree in History, English Literature, Philosophy (got the interest in that through the Marxism) and Sociology after 5 years of study while I was at sea. I also learnt to speak Irish, got a conversational grasp of French and Spanish and basic Russian and Portugese. Positive Thinking was another acquired interest and I got Norman Vincent Peale’s book and made notes on it for myself, removing all the religious references.
After eventually returning home to take care of my parents in their old age, I inherited the family business (amid much acrimony - but that‘s another story). It was quite by chance that I came across a reference to humanism one day, Googled it, and found the HAI which I immediately joined. It has been one of the most positive experiences of my life and has given it new meaning and purpose. Whereas in the past, atheism may have engendered a certain negativity, apathy or even cynicism, humanism has been for me a force for renewal and optimism. My ‘coming out’ moment was when the HAI asked me to say a few words at the annual Famine commemoration in 2010. The Catholic Archbishop recognised me from my old school where he had been prefect of studies and actually commended me for speaking up so I rewarded him by downloading the ‘Count Me Out’ forms and formally resigning from the Catholic church. I am now known as the local humanist around here and people occasionally ask me about it and so far I have not received any negativity. I hope to become more involved in the future when, hopefully, I will have more time.